We Americans are becoming more accident prone, and it’s a development that threatens our lives. That’s the unhappy conclusion from a federal analysis of “unintentional-injury deaths,” better known to average Joes as accidental deaths.The overall rate of accidental deaths rose 7%, to 37.7 per 100,000 in 2004, from 35.3 in 1999, says the analysis published [...]
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is about to join the growing list of academic medical centers that limit docs’ contacts with the drug and device industries and restrict industry payments to faculty and staff.While the university hashes out the details, free drug samples won’t be able to pass directly from sales reps to docs. [...]
Sirtris, the pharma startup that hopes a chemical in red wine will yield a pill to fight some of the effects of aging, lost $9.65 million in the third quarter this year.The company’s stock has done well since it went public earlier this year (see chart), but its Q3 loss, announced this morning, was a [...]
Is time for a backlash to the backlash against drug-coated stents? The NYT reports that some think so. Many docs believe safety fears about the devices have been overblown, and recent data suggest that a return to more frequent use of the devices is in order, according to a story on the paper’s front page [...]
Looks like there’s more trouble afoot for the thin wires that connect implantable devices to the heart. Less than a month after Medtronic pulled a flawed family of the wires off the market, there are concerns that wires sold by St. Jude Medical may in rare cases puncture holes in patients’ hearts, the WSJ reports.Both [...]
The Health Blog looked for stories you might have missed over the weekend. Here’s our short list.There was still plenty to say about Merck’s $4.85 billion agreement to settle its legal liability over painkiller Vioxx. The WSJ recapped the months of negotiations behind the deal. An important catalyst came last December, when judges overseeing nearly [...]
The FDA signaled the beginning of the end for Pfizer’s lucrative Zyrtec franchise by approving a version of the allergy medicine containing a decongestant for sale without a prescription.Pfizer’s loss will be Johnson & Johnson’s gain. When prescription Zyrtec loses patent protection at the end of the year, J&J has the rights to sell the [...]
A belief that good things will happen in our lives appears to be hard-wired in our brains, Robert Lee Hotz writes in his WSJ column today. Being somewhat optimistic is often related to positive behaviors, such as working hard, saving money and taking care of our health. (The images from NYU at right show greater [...]
MerckÂ’s $4.85 billion settlement agreement seems to be settling pretty well with investors. Company shares moved up $2.74, or 5%, a pop to $57.51 in morning trading on the Big Board.The fact that the drug maker’s talking points emphasize that this is no class-action settlement probably helps. Instead, Merck says, the money will establish a [...]
